The Ten Commandments, and the importance of educated & moral citizens

Cecil B. DeMille's famous movie highlighted the importance of the Ten Commandments to a republic without a king.

"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are not the laws. They are THE Law" -stated Cecil B. DeMille at the New York opening of his epic film, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Rameses II, the film was released by Paramount Pictures in 1956.

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While filming on-location in Egypt, Cecil B. DeMille, then 75 years old, climbed a 107-foot ladder to shoot the famous Exodus scene from atop of the massive Per Rameses set.

In the intense heat, DeMille suffered a near-fatal heart attack.

Though doctors ordered him to rest, DeMille finished directing the movie.

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DeMille never fully recovered and died of a heart condition on JANUARY 21, 1959.

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He had anticipated doing a film on the Book of Revelation.

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For almost five decades, Cecil B. DeMille produced monumental films in Hollywood, including:

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Samson and Delilah,

The King of Kings,

The Sign of the Cross,

The Crusades, and

The Greatest Show on Earth, for which he won an Academy Award.

Cecil B. DeMille was educated at Pennsylvania Military Academy and at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

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His niece, Agnes de Mille choreographed films and musicals, such as:

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Oklahoma! (1943);

Paint Your Wagons (1951);

Carousel (1945); and

Rodeo (1942).

The Ten Commandments and Their Influence on American Law

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Continuing his comments at the 1956 New York opening of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, Cecil B. DeMille stated:

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"Man has made 32 million laws since THE COMMANDMENTS were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai more than three thousand years ago, but he has never improved on God's law ...

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are the principles by which man may live with God and man may live with man. They are the expressions of the mind of God for His creatures.

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They are the charter and guide of human liberty, for there can be no liberty without the law ...

What I hope for our production of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is that those who see it shall come from the theater not only entertained and filled with the sight of a big spectacle, but filled with the spirit of truth ...

That it will bring to its audience a better understanding of the real meaning of this pattern of life that God has set down for us to follow."

John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816:

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"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion."

President William McKinley stated in his Inaugural Address, March 4, 1897:

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"Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers ... who will not forsake us so long as we obey HIS COMMANDMENTS."

Alfred Smith, four-term Governor of New York, and Democratic Presidential candidate in 1928, stated in May of 1927:

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"The essence of my faith is built upon THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD. The law of the land is built on THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD. There can be no conflict between them."

Franklin D. Roosevelt stated on December 24, 1942:

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"We as a Nation and as individuals will please God best by showing regard for the laws of God.

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There is no better way of fostering good will toward man than by first fostering good will toward God. If we love Him we will keep His COMMANDMENTS."

In 1954, President Dwight David Eisenhower said:

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"The purpose of a devout and united people was set forth in the pages of The Bible ...

to live in freedom;

to work in a prosperous land; ... and

to obey THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD ...

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This Biblical story of the Promised land inspired the founders of America. It continues to inspire us."

At the time of the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, sometime around 1,400 BC:

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the Hittite language had around 375 cuneiform characters;

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the Indus Valley Harappan language had around 417 symbols;

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the Luwian Anatolian language of had over 500 logographic hieroglyphs;

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the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia had over 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform characters;

In most other countries, only the upper class could read: kings, pharaohs, emperors, their scribes, with the ruling and merchant class.

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When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he not only had THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, but he had them in an easy-to-learn 22 character alphabet.

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(The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is "aleph" and the second letter is "beth").

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With so few characters, everyone could learn to read, even children.

Israel's priests and levites taught the Law, and also taught the people how to read it for themselves.

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It was not only a privilege to read it, the people were required to, as the law was addressed to each person who was personally accountable to God obey it.

How did ancient writing develop?

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The first invention ever was the plow -- "Cain was a tiller of the ground." (Genesis 4:2)

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Then people started hitting each other with them and they turned into weapons.

Then people gravitated together for protection, forming the first communities and cities.

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Once together, someone would be better at knowing how to defend and fight than the rest, and the people would say, you be our captain or leader.

One of the earliest of these leaders was Gilgamesh, who came up with the novel invention of building a wall around his city of Uruk to keep the people safe.

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When a city would survive, the grateful people would view the leader's family favorably.

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His children and grandchildren became an elite class, with one of them eventually acting as the city's political boss, or king, passing on ruling power to descendants in a hereditary monarchy.

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The desire to rule over others was called by St. Augustine, "libido dominandi" -- the lust to dominate.

Kings had control over all the supplies in their cities and wanted to organize everything.

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This resulted in the need for accountants and scribes.

In China, scribes developed a way of counting with knots in ropes, or using bamboo strips.

In Sumeria, scribes developed a way of counting using rods with beads -- an abacus.

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Then they used tokens in dishes.

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The markings on the tokens -- similar to tallying -- turned into cuneiform.

Writing then evolved into keeping track of the king's genealogy, king's decrees, astrological observations, myths, and royal propaganda.

There was no need for common people to read as they had relatively few possessions to keep track of, and obviously made no decrees.

In most instances, lower classes, and slaves were forbidden to learn how to read.

In Ancient Egypt, the literacy rate was less than one percent.

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The National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, has a display on "Scribes" in its section on Egyptian Artifacts:

"Only a small percentage of ancient Egypt's population was literate, namely the pharaoh, members of the royal family, officials, priests and scribes.

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Particularly popular and lucrative, the scribe's profession was mostly hereditary. Scribes had careers in the government, priesthood, and army."

It is theorized that scribes kept writing complicated as job security. It was their secret knowledge. They were needed to decipher the cryptic hieroglyphs.

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Writing was, in a sense, the communication of the "deep-state" ruling class to maintain control over uneducated masses.

Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1908-2009) wrote:

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"Ancient writing's main function was to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings."

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

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"In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

A similar situation existed in Medieval Europe, where the fall of the Roman Empire left only the upper class and clergy able read.

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Most commoners could not read, which contributed to the people being more easily controlled by the king and elite class.

This situation existed in the United States prior to the Civil War, where Southern Democrat slave-holding states had laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read, especially after Nat Turner's slave rebellion.

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It was easier to control illiterate, uneducated people.

A North Carolina Act in 1831 stated:

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"Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion ...

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Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina ...

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That any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within the State to read or write ... shall ... be fined not less than one hundred dollars."

Frederick Douglass, the Republican advisor to Abraham Lincoln, was born a slave in Baltimore, Maryland.

He told the story that one day, when he was about 12 years old, his master's sister-in-law, Sophia Auld, was teaching him the alphabet.

When her husband found out, he yelled at her, adamantly forbidding it, saying that if slaves could read, they would grow discontent, desire freedom and run away.

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Frederick Douglass considered this the "first decidedly anti-slavery lecture" he had ever heard, causing him to be determined to read all-the-more.

He wrote in his autobiography The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History (1881) of being caught attempting to read a newspaper.

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It was snatched away from him with a scolding.

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Douglass learned to read from neighborhood white children, and from carefully observing the writings of men he worked with.

Many Islamic countries limit the education of girls and women, which contributes to them being subservient.

Centralize control of education through state-approved standardize curriculum is the situation in socialist and communist dictatorships.

A totalitarian tactic is to intentionally make education complicated so students lose interest in academic achievement and do not develop critical thinking skills.

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Emphasis is instead placed behavior modification. Students are systematically conditioned to reject the values of their parents and embrace the values of the state.

Plato wrote in his Republic, 380 BC:

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"Kings ... will set in order their own city ... They will ... take possession of the children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws."

Ancient Israel was the first nation where there were millions of literate people and no king.

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They existed this way for four centuries in what is referred to as the Hebrew Republic.

Israelites were taught the read the law, and to be individually accountable to God to follow the law.

It is consistently observed through history that for a people to be in charge of themselves, they need to be educated and moral.

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Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, that the "spring" or motivation force in a republic is virtue:

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"It is the nature of a republican government that... the people ... should be possessed of the supreme power ...

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One spring more is necessary, namely, virtue ... The politic Greeks, who lived under a popular government, knew no other support than virtue."

When examining the types of governments, they all fall somewhere on the spectrum of power, with

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TOTAL GOVERNMENT is on one side,

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and NO GOVERNMENT on the other side.

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On the total government side, power is in the hands of one person who rules through fear.

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On the no government side, there is anarchy, unless the people are taught self-control.

On the total government side, as power concentrates there is more favoritism and corruption.

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On the no government side, power is separated among the people and order is maintained by citizens having virtue and internal morals

But there is an important question: why would you obey an internal moral?

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What would motivate you to resist yielding to a selfish temptation?

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Ancient Israel introduced into the world the necessary key in the very first commandment - God.

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This God:

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is watching every individual;

wants you to be fair; and

will hold you accountable in the future.

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Imagine, for example, you had the opportunity to steal and not get caught.

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?You might consider it until you remember that God is watching, He wants you to be fair, and He will hold you accountable in the future.

Your hesitation to steal is called having a "conscience."

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If everybody in the nation truly believes this, there would be complete safety with no police.

Democrat candidate for President, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, stated in his speech "The Prince of Peace" (New York Times, September 7, 1913):

Our system of ... civil polity would be imperfect without the true religion ... From the diffusion of virtue among the people of any community would arise their greatest secular happiness.

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Israel's decentralized form of government allowed for maximum individual liberty."

Claude Fleury wrote in The Manners of the Ancient Israelites (1681):

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"The Israelites were perfectly free. They enjoyed the liberty cherished by Greece and Rome. Such was the purpose of God."

E.C. Wines wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews (NY: Geo. P. Putnam & Co., 1853):

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"Another of those great ideas, which constituted the basis of the Hebrew state, was liberty ...

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The Hebrew people enjoyed as great a degree of personal liberty, as can ever be combined with an efficient and stable government."

This situation of individual liberty and self-rule can only work with the God of the Bible.

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Socialist and communist governments do not believe an individual has inalienable rights. They only have rights that the state gives, and which the state can also take away if a person is no longer of value to or opposes the state.

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The Allah of the Qur'an does not give inalienable rights to kafir infidels, but permits Muslims to lie, steal, rape, and kill them in various instances.

Only the God of the Bible states that all men and women are equal -- made in the image of the Creator -- and that one should do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Referring to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, Herbert Hoover stated in San Diego, California, September 17, 1935:

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"Our Constitution ... is based upon certain inalienable freedoms and protections which in no event the government may infringe ...

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It does not require a lawyer to interpret those provisions. They are as clear as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ...

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The freedom of worship, freedom of speech and of the press, the right of peaceable assembly, equality before the law ... behind them is the conception which is the highest development of the Christian faith ... individual freedom with brotherhood."

Ronald Reagan stated at a National Rifle Association banquet in Phoenix, May 6, 1983:

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"If we could just keep remembering that Moses brought down from the mountain THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, not ten suggestions -- and if those of us who live for the Lord could remember that He wants us to love our Lord and our neighbor, then there's no limit to the problems we could solve."

Roosevelt stated in a radio address on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1943:

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"Skeptics and the cynics of Washington ... are like the people who carp at THE TEN COMMANDMENTS because some people are in the habit of breaking one or more of them."

Roosevelt stated in a Press Conference, December 22, 1944:

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"We don't all live up to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, which is perfectly true, but on the whole they are pretty good. It's something pretty good to shoot for.

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The Christian religion most of us in the room happen to belong to, we think it is pretty good. We certainly haven't attained it.

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Well, the Atlantic Charter ... not comparing it with the Christian religion or THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ... was a step towards a better life for the population of the world."

On March 8, 1983, at the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, President Reagan stated:

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"There's a great spiritual awakening in America ...

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One recent survey by a Washington-based research council concluded ... 95 percent of those surveyed expressed a belief in God.

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A huge majority believed THE TEN COMMANDMENTS had real meaning in their lives."

The U.S. District Court, in Crockett v. Sorenson, (W.D. Va. 1983), stated:

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"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS have had immeasurable effect on Anglo-American legal development ...

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A basic background in the Bible is essential to fully appreciate and understand both Western culture and current events."

Senator Robert Byrd addressed Congress, June 27, 1962:

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"Above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, with the great American eagle protecting them.

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Moses is included among the great lawgivers in Herman A MacNeil's marble sculpture group on the east front."

"The text of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS no doubt has played a role in the secular development of our society and can no doubt be presented by the government as playing such a role in our civic order ...

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A carving of Moses holding THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, surrounded by representations of other historical legal figures, adorns the frieze on the south wall of our courtroom, and we have said that the carving signals respect not for great proselytizers but for great lawgivers."

"While ... emerging democracies ... turn from the long held atheism of communism to true religious freedoms, we find ourselves, with heavy hearts, watching our own Government succumb to pressures to distant itself from God and religion.

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Our own Government ... has ... evolve into bans against the simple freedom as ... representation of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS on government buildings ...

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Such a standard of religious exclusion is absolutely and unequivocally counter to the intention of those who designed our Government."

On February 5, 1997, Governor Fob James threatened to call out the National Guard to prevent the removal of the Ten Commandments display from a courtroom in Gadsden, Alabama:

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"The only way those TEN COMMANDMENTS and prayer would be stripped from that courtroom is with the force of arms."

In 1973, as Governor of California, Ronald Reagan stated:

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"With freedom goes responsibility. Sir Winston Churchill once said you can have 10,000 regulations and still not have respect for the law.

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We might start with THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. If we lived by the Golden Rule, there would be no need for other laws."